The situation in Myanmar is in a flux. The Three Brotherhood Alliance’s offensive continues with its triumphant progress

It has been over two months since the Three Brotherhood Alliance (henceforth the Alliance) launched their co-ordinated military offensive against Myanmar’s ruling Junta on 27 October 2023. Comprising the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), active in the Kokang Special Region of northern Shan State, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), also active in the Shan State, and the Arakan Army (AA), based in the Rakhine State in the country’s western part, the Alliance has heaped defeat after defeat on the Sit-Tat, as Myanmar’s junta-controlled Army is called.

The Kokang, a media site affiliated with the MNDAA, quoted the latter’s chief, Peng Deren, as saying in his New Year’s speech that the alliance had seized over 250 military targets and five border crossings with China, and had taken about 1,000 prisoners of war. That he was not exaggerating is clear from the Alliance’s capture of the critically important city of Laukkaing, the capital of the Kokang Self-Administered Zone, geographically a part of the northern Shan State, on January 4, 2024, when the junta’s forces, who had surrendered, were allowed to withdraw.

The fall of Laukkaing, one of the Sit-Tat’s seven Regional Operation Commands (ROCs), to the Alliance, has clearly been the junta’s biggest defeat to date. A report by AP’s Grant Peck, datelined January 6, 2024, quoted a statement posted by the Alliance, as stating that 2,389 military personnel—including six brigadier-generals—and their family members had surrendered by January 5 (Friday) and had been evacuated to safety. The pressure on the Sit-Tat is all the greater because the Alliance is not fighting alone. According to the website, The Irrawaddy, several resistance organisations including the People’s Defence Force (PDF), the armed wing of the opposition National Unity Government (NUG), the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF), and one of the country’s most powerful armed ethnic organisations, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), are coordinating with the Alliance’s operation.

The Sit-Tat had been struggling on most fronts and had lost control over most parts of Myanmar even before the Alliance had launched its current offensive. A Briefing paper released on September 5, 2022, by the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, a group of international experts supporting the country’s struggle for democracy, said that the junta had stable control over only 72 out of the country’s 330 townships, constituting just 17 per cent of Myanmar’s land area. The NUG and ethnic resistance organisations effectively controlled over 52 per cent of Myanmar’s territory and 23 per cent was contested.

The offensive had made things worse for the junta, whose effective military strength is far below what appears on paper. According to a piece by Ye Myo Hein (datelined May 4, 2023) featured by the United States Institute of Peace, it was found on the basis of “extensive interviews with military deserters and defectors, analysis of internal military directives and meeting notes, historical records of troop movements and sizes, and casualty counts from primary conflict data and military hospital records,” that the Sit-Tat, whose “headcount, which was widely thought to total 300,000-400,000 before the coup,” currently “had a strength of about 150,000 personnel. Roughly 70,000 are combat soldiers. At least 21,000 service members have been lost through casualties, desertion and defection since the coup. At this troop level, the Sit-Tat is barely able to sustain itself as a fighting force, much less a government.”

A report by Sui-lee Wee in The New York Times (datelined December 10, 2023), cites the People’s Embrace, a group that supports defectors from Myanmar’s security forces, as saying that at least 4,500 soldiers had defected. It further states that Myanmar’s Defence Services Academy, the country’s equivalent of the United States’ well-known officers training facility at West Point, “admitted 83 students this year [2023], far below the usual number of about 1,000”—attributing the observation to a lecturer at the academy who declined to be named for lack of authorisation to speak to journalists. The Sit-Tat is finding it increasingly difficult to get recruits and, according to several reports, resorting to abductions to fill its ranks.

The junta has tried to make up for its weakness on the ground by savage air strikes against three targets—the Peoples Defence Force, the armies of the ethnic minority groups like the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF), and one of the country’s most powerful armed ethnic organisations, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and the country’s civilian population. The severe reverses it has suffered on the ground indicate that the air attacks have had little impact militarily. The attacks on civilians, deliberately aimed at killing and injuring as many people as possible, and ensuring large-scale destruction of property, have clearly been aimed at punishing the people for overwhelmingly opposing the junta. While serving little military purpose, these are causing the people’s anger against the generals to soar.

The junta knows that it will be ousted and according to rumours, some generals are seeking peace with the opposition, even at the cost of defenestrating its head and the Sit-Tat’s chief, Min Aung Hlaing. According to a report in the Al Jazeera (January 4, 2024), Myanmars’s Independence Day celebrations on January 4 this year, lacked their usual pomp, and Hlaing was notably absent from the proceedings.

(The writer is a consultant Editor with The Pioneer, views are personal)